Census figures put the population of Ireland in 1841 at 8.2 million. The Census for 1851 tallied 6.9 million. That marks a drop in population of 1.3 million and that number is not solely down to the decrease due to the famine it also includes those who died of natural causes unconnected to the famine - True?

Nowhere even remotely close to 1 million died - we do know with a fair degree of certainty that approximately 1 million people did emigrate

There might have been people not included in the censuses but it would be highly unlikely to extend to as much as 12.5% of the total population - that sort of number would be noticeable in a predominantly rural community, they have to have shelter, they have to burn cooking fires and they have to eat. The contention that a hitherto unheard of and unknown mass of 1 million Irishmen, women and children crept out of the woodwork to die just to stick it to the Brits is downright laughable. If you want to introduce the factor of "woolly" numbers then do so accepting the fact that it must be recognised that those inaccuracies work both ways.

Of course sciencegeek swedes were known about in the late 1600s and early 1700s "they were described in France" question is pal, who was actually cultivating them as a crop? - In the UK we know with absolute certainty that that didn't happen until the early 1900s - again True? So what on earth makes you think that, all of a sudden, growing swedes would immediately spring to mind as a solution to a potato blight that struck in the mid 1800s? Who would have come up with the idea? Who would have the necessary knowledge regarding this crop, who among the starving Irish would know what to do with it? Who would they have suggested it to? Who would have acted on it? Just how long would it have taken to mass the number of plants required (IF you could get them - Remember the blight hit Europe as well), ship them to Ireland, distribute them, then plant and grow them to the stage where they would have been of any benefit.

I am sorry once more you seem to blithely skate over the detail, ignore all the very real problems to offer up a totally unworkable solution then castigate the authorities for not following that through - Just try getting your head round the fact that in Ireland in the 1840s they couldn't even harvest and transport crops grown in Ireland to the west of their own country. They had a hard enough time transporting and distributing ground corn to centres of population. That was the reality that the authorities had to deal with and nobody anywhere in the world had ever had to deal with something on this scale before - personally I believe that they deserve being cut a bit of slack on that point.

" I have no idea where you got your fairy tale about "coffin ships", but the name came from the deplorable conditions that resulted in high mortality"

I am sorry to disappoint you but the term "Coffin Ship" although associated with the transport of emigrants from both Scotland and Ireland has got nothing whatsoever to do with "the deplorable conditions" of the passengers onboard. It is an insurance term meaning any ship that has been overinsured and is therefore worth more to its owners sunk than afloat.

"The REAL stumbling block is having people so wedded to defending their own positions that they blind themselves to alternatives. Can anyone acknowledge that this is not a black and white issue? That honest mistakes were made along with callus indifference on the part of others? This need to make ogres or saints and simplistic answers, when the reality is far more complex."

The only people wedded to defending their own positions are those who are stubbornly clinging to the myth that the Potato Famine in Ireland was all a deliberate plot engineered by Great Britain.

Example: "Britain THE WEALTHIEST NATION ON THE PLANET WITH INCREASING ADDITIONS TO ITS WEALTH AND POWER washed their hands of the Irish problem and ethically cleansed them out of Ireland."

I am sorry but that is complete and utter crap. It is complete and utter crap that does not even stand up to even the most cursory examination.

a) Great Britain was certainly ONE OF the wealthiest nations on the planet and in response to the situation in Ireland, Great Britain provided more in terms of aid and relief than every other source of aid donated combined by a factor of about three - the exact statistics are given in Cecile Woodham-Smith's book "The Great Hunger". Great Britain also received and absorbed the largest number of emigrants from Ireland.

b) By the mid 1800s the British Empire had started to go into decline and the Empire was actually costing Great Britain money according to historian and economist Niall Ferguson - so much for "INCREASING ADDITIONS TO ITS WEALTH AND POWER"

c) Had Great Britain really "washed their hands of the Irish problem" it would have been cheaper for them to simply sit back and do nothing, just as the American Irish did, just as the Roman Catholic Church did, just as the Irish land owners did.

I am the only one here arguing the case that it wasn't some fiendish and deliberate plot. I am arguing the case that it was not a black and white issue. I am arguing the case that mistakes were made. The only thing is neither yourself or the likes of GregF and Christmas Carroll can be arsed to actually debate - you merely attack. Take your viewpoint as an example. God knows how many times I have now asked you just how things could have been done to feed the people in situ, reform their farming practices so that the next famine would not just be a few more years down the line - So far you have refused point blank to address those questions offering up instead alternative solutions that would have been impossible to implement at the time - YOU then stubbornly defend those impracticable solutions.

So just one last time. I do not care what the food is, I do not give a toss what the relief is - it could be Chinese take away for all I care.

How do you transport it to the people in situ? Taking into account that you have:
- No ports to ship in whatever it is that is required
- No storage facilities to hold these supplies
- No distribution network
- No roads suitable for large wagons, very few large wagons
- No fodder for horses, very few horses for that matter

While you are sorting all this out people are malnourished so they cannot work and people are dying. In this situation there is only ONE THING you can do that will be of immediate effect - you must move the people to where you can get relief to them, if they will not move voluntarily then they must be induced to move or they will surely die.

My only experience of anything like this was in 1970 the Bhola Cyclone that swept up the Bay of Bengal and struck East Pakistan killing 500,000 people - According to the New York Times "It remains the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, and one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern times.". The cyclone struck on the 12th November. Aid and relief efforts were drastically hindered by the situation between India and Pakistan - it took some 10 days before real intervention began, the Royal Navy sent the Amphibious Assault Ship HMS Intrepid and the Heavy Repair Ship HMS Triumph (ex-Fleet Aircraft Carrier). We arrived 12 days after the cyclone had struck, but we had flown advanced parties ahead to do the recces for us. We had 650 men, we had helicopters and we had landing craft to distribute food and materials, to land portable generators and to build shelters. In HMS Triumph we had our own fabrication facility that could damn near make anything mechanical or electrical we required, we had technicians who could be flown ashore to repair anything that required repair. The survivors we found were in a state of depression and total apathy, they had to be bullied into movement and action just in order to save themselves, otherwise they would have just squatted where they were until they died. Initially they could not be bothered to move a couple of hundred yards to where food and shelter were. Once they knew that there was food and shelter available the men could then be organised into teams to assist in the search and rescue, relief operations and clear up (Bodies being the greatest risk and health hazard - but once again the only option was to move the people in order to save them. One of the Pakistani Naval Officers acting as our Liaison Officer commented as the effort wound down, "Until the next time" When asked about it he said that the people accepted the cyclones and tidal surges as a fact of life, they would gradually steal back to places that they knew full well were dangerous, because those places were easier to farm and to fish.